Tale

The novels can't be that canon. Like I said, Minsc knows Neera from the Enhanced Edition. And a comic published first in 2014 is going to be more canon than a novel published in 1999. At a minimum lots of stuff happened not shown in the novel. Including character appearances. The wiki of the Baldur's Gate novel doesn't even mention Coran. But it is canon that Coran traveled with the Bhaalspawn for a while, alongside Minsc.

Minsc and Coran are still alive. Coran is a noble in Baldur's Gate now. Minsc and boo got petrified and later revived accidentally by a Wild Mage that Minsc mistakes for Neera. They go on an adventure with Coran's son and some others. Any of the other Dwarves or Elves could still be alive, too. Like Viconia, Kagain, Kivan, Aerie. Aerie especially since she was very young, the others I'm less clear on their ages. In what book did Minsc reappear in? Also Jaheira was eaten by a griffen. Legends of Baldur's Gate, followed by Shadows of the Vampire (they get transported to Ravenloft), Frost Giant's Fury (Icewind Dale), and Evil at Baldur's Gate. The last issue of Evil was released in August. I've read all of it up until Evil issue #1. Good fun! And geeze about Jaheira. Why do they have to kill everyone? Why can't they just leave it happy, or at least vague enough we can believe they're on a farm upstate. My parents were at least that decent.

Minsc and Coran are still alive. Coran is a noble in Baldur's Gate now. Minsc and boo got petrified and later revived accidentally by a Wild Mage that Minsc mistakes for Neera. They go on an adventure with Coran's son and some others. Any of the other Dwarves or Elves could still be alive, too. Like Viconia, Kagain, Kivan, Aerie. Aerie especially since she was very young, the others I'm less clear on their ages.

Okay, I'm just reading that Ed Greenwood helped write a campaign where So, I guess player defined endings of BG2 have already been replaced.

If they are to continue the Bhaalspawn story, I would assume it would be a new protagonist. There were 2nd generation Bhaalspawn in the original trilogy, so that would be a route to go down. With potentially unspecified parentage. Of course, the whole saga wasn't shy about having a canon, player choice be damned, so I couldn't hold it against any followups if they did the same. Given the comics, they could bring Minsc back (or what might be an animated statue of him). And include Coran's son and Delina.

I've arrived in the titular Baldur's Gate. I'm branching out from my usual party of Khaleid, Jaheira, Imoen, Viconia, and Whatever-Mage-I-Settle-On-Probably-Edwin. That's a habit due to playing BG2 before BG1. I've got Kagain, Dorn, Safana, Viconia (because of course), and Neera. Would have swapped Neera for Edwin, but Edwin is just too far behind now. I'm looking forward to Siege of Dragonspear, which I've never played. And then I'm looking forward to BG2EE. Last time I played BG2, even though it was EE, I didn't know Hexxat existed.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition with Unfinished Business and the NPC pack for more banters. While looking up stuff, I found trivia that Imoen was a late addition to add a non-evil thief. And they just reused dialogue from a cut guard named Pique for her voice. But if that's true, why does she say "it's me, Imoen." That must have been some fun sound editing if true.

I can only get so sold.

Decided to put Kingmaker on the backburner until some more patches. Lots of talk about more issues in later acts and I'd hate to get to one and kill my momentum. But I have an itch. So I started up Baldur's Gate: EE again. Why are good Sorcerer portraits so hard to find? It's an issue with Warlocks too. All the male spellcasters are old men or weirdos. Where's my sophisticated magicy prettyboys? Like Loki from the Marvel movies. Found a portrait of him, but I'll give up video games forever before I use a movie star portrait for a game. Only decent one in the default game is Edwin's. Like I need two of him in the party. Edit: Found a doozy. https://vk.com/photo-34109479_341917808 Rerolled until I had 93 beautiful points to spend and then made all of his stats almost high, 17 or 16 in everything but a 12 in strength and 15 in Charisma. Because Sorcerers in Baldur's Gate don't have a casting stat.

Is the entire Banner Saga trilogy particularly good, even if you like unhappy things? I backed the first part, but never really played it.

Lawful Evil, always. Too many of my favorite characters in fantasy stories are the token evil teammate, I have to take up the mantle myself.

Yeah

Looks like the remaining Telltale members working on Minecraft for Netflix were let go as well. https://twitter.com/anameformyself/status/1047930803634630657 Edit: Correction, not all of the skeleton crew were let go. So I can't even say if it's Minecraft or not. https://twitter.com/anameformyself/status/1047975335235481600

I finished Telltale's Batman season 2. And the final episode was very whelming. It felt like half the size as any other episode in either title. And Joker's ultimate turn ended up being just not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Maybe if the game had spent more time with that version of him it would have been better.

Not good, evil. I got an option to threaten to kill everyone or bluff my way in. I chose to bluff and the second I walked in, one guy screamed bloody murder and the whole place turned hostile. I tried savescumming for other paths to sneak in, but they operated the same. The second I cross the fort wall, get spotted, entire place goes hostile. Nope. Never saw anything even slightly like this. Nobody talked to me other than the gate guard. Who only opened the door. I scouted the entire surrounding area beforehand. Just didn't kill all of the Bandit Brawler/Alchemist groups. I avoided them. So much for brute forcing! Only 1 of these 3 I could get and it required savescumming. Only party member with Nature is Amiri. She failed half the time I tried to make the check. And the Owlbear didn't actually bother doing much to help. He stayed in his cage, I only finally got some help because enemies wandered too close to him. Not because the Owlbear actually went out and tried to help. The only way I beat this fight is because I savescummed a nature check that got an NPC to fight for me. Last time a DM was throwing boss fights at my group that had to be won by NPC, I was rather nonplussed. But at least that NPC was actually there to help and wasn't basically an environmental trap I only got if a single character won the roll. So did I try to brute force? No, I tried to talk through it. And my party got killed. Then I tried sneaking. Killed. I tried cutting the alarm, not an option. I tried setting a trap, except the Stag Lord ignores initiative and in the middle of someone else's turn he shows up, calls in like 5 other guys, buffs himself, and teleports. So I had to resort to MMO pulling. And got lucky when the Stag Lord wandered too close to the Owlbear while out of sight.

And it turns out the boss fights are complete nonse. There goes my enjoyment of the game. Had to cheese the stag lord fight. There was one guy in it who did 1d10+17. And enough attack bonus to hit my Half-Plate + 1, tower shield specialist on a 10. Did I say 1 guy? Make that two. Two other similarly strong guys (the only one of which I checked could hit the tank at an 11 and the last is titular Stag Lord). Then about 3 or 4 regular enemies. Make sure you don't aggro any of the other bandits in the camp, if you pull in one group, you could bring 9 bandits on your head. They can mow you down themselves. I did beat the fight. Using MMO tactics of pulling individual guys and testing their group aggro ranges. And also savescumming to get an Owlbear to tank for me, which it did with no problem. On Normal, this battle did not leave me with the satisfaction of a battle hard won. A bunch of the groups around the boss battle area (which I ended up leaving alive) have enemies in it who are just as tough as those boss guys. I savescummed several times because they mowed my Valerie down before I could kill them. I was making camps in the middle of the enemy camp while a bunch of enemies still lived in it. Just to get the healing I needed to get back in the fight. It felt like I was a good 2 levels or more short of being supposed to fight that. But I'd done every single quest available. I've seen talk about how it's justified that they're giving +17! bonuses to the enemies because we're a 6 member party instead of a 4 and players are smarter than the computer. But they're also doubling and tripling the numbers of enemies.

All disabling auto-updates does is make it so it waits to update when you launch the game. Steam does not like people playing without updates.

You you guys talking chapter 4? I've heard more than a few complaints about gamestoppers there, though haven't read the specifics.

Onto Batman season 2 Episode 3. Only this far in and I can tell how they would have turned this into a trilogy. And I can feel sad it will never be. Batman/Catwoman stories are among my favorite in comics. It's probably why The Long Holloween is one of my top 5 comic stories of all time. And I'm no Batman fan. Dark Knight Returns is garbage, Killing Joke is just okay. But when Batman and Catwoman team up, I'm there. Like Heart of Hush has this absolutely beautiful ending until the final page where it gets thrown away between page turns and I become glad DC tossed that entire continuity for screwing them up like that.

They're putting out hotfixes rapidly, but each seems to cause a spectacular bug of their own. On today's menu, invisible spell selection at level up! When leveling and getting to choose spells, the panel appears blank. They're there, just invisible. How spooky.

Not a fan of Knight, actually. Too much car/tank. Like the only boss battle that doesn't involve the tank is the crappy riddler fight. Anyway, I had to stop halfway into episode 2 of Batman season 2 to say how much I love their version of Harley. She's intimidating. She doesn't act ditzy and random, she's a thug and a kingpin that plays it off as being a joke. And then she just... changes. Starts claiming that she's against violence, it's the other guys who are trouble, and she sells it. I know she's being manipulative, but I want to believe her. And their version of Joker is just kind of fun. He's still like his season 1 self, seeming more like he's just playful and misled. And I can't justify not treating him like a friend who simply needs a nudge in the right direction. But he's the Joker, so you just have to wait for it all to blow up. Is he playing you or is something coming that makes him?

Telltale really liked going all out in first episodes. Just finished episode 1 of Batman season 2. Since so much had happened, I found myself wondering how far I was in to episode 2. Nope, only 3/4th the way into Episode 1.

That's the one. I did the rival parts first, so when I came to Technic league, I was level 3, maybe 4. Split up my four meleers to each individually occupy an enemy fighter. Amiri's doing okay since I'm doing what I can to improve her AC.